The use of social networking tools, software, and websites is increasingly popular and the number of users and services continue to go up on a daily basis. For example, the number of www.Facebook.com users worldwide has exceeded the entire population of the United States and the number of professionals that use sites such as www.LinkedIn.com or www.Plaxo.com is also on the upswing. Social networking users want to stay connected to previous, and possibly future, friends, family members, and colleagues that may be able to help them, and each other, find rewarding and meaningful jobs and careers.
Also, there are many collaboration sites that people may join in order to post or comment on ideas or discussions such as Google Groups or Yahoo Groups. Many of these sites require profile information, such as a photo, personal history, career backgrounds, educational experience, and contact information. Some services or websites require this information while others allow it to be optional. Some of these sites allow an end user to upload a number of different media files, such as photos, videos, or other images, for sharing or collaboration.
The explosion of social networking activities has generated a wide variety of problems and concerns. For example, end users frequently need to deal with multiple copies or sources of similar data such as profiles, images, history, and contact info. End users are often required to learn how to use a number of different and unique interfaces in order to do similar operations such as upload, download, share, and access control. The loss of control that end users may experience over their content can be irritating to the user and possibly even troubling. For example, once an end user's image is uploaded to a social networking server, a copy of the image is then stored on servers that are outside the control of the end user. This means that the user has little, if any, control over how long the image is to be retained, who is allowed to see the image, who is allowed to share the image, etc.
Users of social networking sites and services often experience a number of problems and concerns in addition to those listed above. For example, redundancy may be difficult, if impossible, to avoid for an end user. That is, end users may find that they are performing the same operation(s) such as uploading, downloading, and sharing over and over at each of his or her social networking site or service. End users may also find themselves victims of neglect. For example, end users may be missing updates at one or more social networking sites or services. End users may even find themselves victims of abandonment or expulsion due to long term neglect. This could ultimately result in unintentional, and possibly unrecoverable, loss of use for the end user.